Memoir

The Harshness of Life

I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much I like certain magazines. My current favorites are The New Yorker, Sunset and National Geographic. The appeal to me of The New Yorker is less about life in the City and which restaurant to go to next than it is about the broader cultural messages it provides about everything from politics to literature to theater and music, as well as the current cinema and humor. I think of The New Yorker as being about all the things we live for when we are not working at making a living. The fact that The New Yorker also espouses a strong urban liberal ideology also makes me want to read it to stay in touch with that sentiment even though I have removed myself from the belly of that beast. Sunset, on the other hand, is sort of the West Coast variation on that theme and provides the bicoastal balance that I must adopt along with my new home out here in the west. It is interesting that all of my and Kim’s siblings have gravitated from our eastern roots to the more casual allure of the West Coast, very much in keeping with what Lucy and Desi (not to mention the Beverly Hillbillies) did in their own lives, going from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to suburban Connecticut and then hitting the road to California. Sunset is totally western in its look, feel and theme and yet, it too seems to have a compatible sensibility for the liberal lifestyle. Though the California electorate joined the rest of the country and shifted to the right on November 5th, and the allure of Reaganomics to many remains a part of California prop heritage, I am glad to say that the state remains dominated by blue sentiment and that gets reflected in the pages of Sunset.

The last of my magazine favorites is National Geographic. I can remember the yellow-bordered magazine for as long as I remember any magazine (except perhaps that sophomoric standard, MAD magazine, which will always be on a youthful pedestal in my mind), but it’s less about heritage that draws me to it and more about my eternal love of science that works so well for me. I should probably add that its specifically earth science that I enjoy rather than the more specialized and way too detached scientific endeavors that might appear in scientific journals. Nothing embodies that attraction more than National Geographic. I will delete, delete, delete the New Yorker and Sunset emails I receive without a moment’s thought, but I rarely pass over a National Geographic email unless it is pitching me something in the headline like a new subscription to NatGeo Kids or something. I ALWAYS want to read at least the headlines of articles in National Geographic because I almost always find something that peaks my interest. This morning I am spending my Sunday doing absolutely nothing. That is very much by design and with great pleasure. It’s a sunny but quite chilly day (it was in the high 30’s when I went for bagels), one of those rare days when it is warmer in NYC than out here in the land of eternal sunshine. It will warm to the 60’s, but not so much that I will be driven from the comfort of my living room, I suspect. While Kim is working on holiday decorations and I am kibitzing from a seated position, I am catching up on some reading and writing, my favorite pastimes.

I read two interesting and complimentary articles in National Geographic that caught my attention. The first was about the northernmost flower on the planet and the second was about the southernmost tree on the planet. The former was just about what sort of plants could survive the harsh northern climes, whereas the second was more about how old trees get old and stay alive, and why that happens to coincide with the southernmost places like Patagonia. We are not planning any great treks to the north, but we are going in a few months to the southernmost part of the world when we cruise around Cape Horn. I am a longtime lover of trees and their strength and solidarity, and I have become a devotee of flowers and especially those that can blossom in harsh and extreme conditions (in my case desert conditions mostly), so both articles struck me as fun topics to learn about.

The flower search took place on the northernmost peninsula of Greenland, well into the arctic circle and the closest point of land to the North Pole that exists. This is a land of darkness, not just in terms of the sky and the short daylight hours in the winter, but also in the landscape. It seems that it consists of little more than grey gravel. There is a patch of land on Rt.24 in the middle of Utah near Hanksville that I always say looks like the far side of the moon with its grey gravel. That is what I imagine the northernmost peninsula of Greenland must look like in the summer. The flower that this NatGeo expedition found amongst all that dingy grey rock was the yellowish green Arctic Poppy that has just as big and beautiful a blossom as any poppy you would see in my garden. The expedition found what it considered was the poppy at the most northern spot on the peninsula and were in the process of taking its picture for posterity and their article when they realized that while it was the northernmost flower, it was not the northernmost plant. That honor seemed to go to a moss that was just inches north of the flower. The commentary is all about what it takes for a flower to survive and perhaps even thrive in such a harsh place and with so little company. For instance, are there any birds and bees to help spread the poppy’s seed? The conclusion was that the harshness of the environment was more a help than a hindrance in that it eliminated many of the competing interests that might otherwise cause harm to the poppy and thereby gave it a better chance to thrive.

Men have been looking for old trees, and by extension, the oldest tree, for many years. The thinking had been that the best candidate was the Bristlecone Pines found in the desolate, grey isolation of the Great Basin of Nevada. Those trees, and one in particular (named Methuselah), was deemed to be about 4,853 years old with a trunk of almost ten feet in diameter. Most people might think it would be the mighty Sequoias or Redwoods that tower in the northern parts of California, but size is not really the strongest indicator of age. It seems these Bristlecone Pines grow very wide and squat rather than tall and majestic. They grow very slowly with each ring proving to be a very tight and hardened addition to its ever-expanding skin. It seems this tight hardness gives the Bristlecone an impermeable presence that predators and disease cannot easily penetrate. This and the same sort of harsh and desolate environment that the Arctic Poppy enjoys makes the Bristlecone very hardy. But then a Chilean scientist has found that the southernmost tree in existence these days is on a little peninsula off of Isla Hornos, looking out over the treacherous Cape Horn to the south where the Drake Passage lies. Millennia ago there were trees on Antarctica, but no longer, making Isla Hornos the holder of that southernmost tree accolade. The team found the southernmost tree on a north-facing slope, sheltered from the hurricane force winds coming off Cape Horn. It was a Magellan Beech tree of about 41 years in age and is only two feet high thanks to the harsh winds. So, not the oldest tree. It seems now that Methuselah does have a Chilean competitor (still to be scientifically verified) in the form of a Patagonian Cypress that has been found in a Patagonian ravine. That tree, with its 12 foot diameter trunk is deemed to be about 5,400 years old, and unlike its young cousin on Isla Hornos where the conditions are so harsh, this one seems to live in a protected ravine where natural predators are kept at bay since the last ice age.

Life may be harsh and that may lead to longevity, but you have to hand it to a species like man that will take the time and go to the trouble to find the northernmost flower and the southernmost tree as well as the oldest living tree, just because he can.